Can't backup to floppy

[Will Nelson]

The shit hit the fan today.
For the past six months, we have been backing up our Microport
System v/386 by rcp'ing things over the network to a VAX, and
backing the files up to 9-track tape.

We had some bad spots appear on disk 0, so we had to reload
everything from floppies again: runtime system, development system,
link kit, Network Services Extensions, MICOM-Interlan NP626,
Locus Merge, Microsoft C compiler, Microsoft Macro Assembler, etc.
Each time we have done this, it has been a royal pain in the ass.
Eight sets of different floppies, eight sets of documentation,
countless little tricks to get things to work.

We decided this time to back everything up to floppies,
so that the next time we get bad spots on the hard disk,
we can re-format the disk and load just one set of floppies.
Should have done this the first time, you say?
Well, we were (are are still) waiting for a cartridge tape
driver, well, nevermind ...

The zinger: I got through cpio'ing files to the first floppy,
when it said:

	cpio: ERROR: Can't open /dev/tty for reading

The permissions on /dev/tty were 666, owned by root.
Permissions on the /dev directory were 755, owned by root.

Thinking this was some kind of a joke, I wrote a little C
program which just opens /dev/tty for reading. Worked fine
from my networked terminal, but when I tried it from the
console, it failed: "No such device or address".

That's right, you got it: I can't back the &ENCD%$@K!! system
up to floppy with a network/Locus Merge kernel from the console.
cpio didn't seem to work any better (in fact, worse) from the
networked terminal, and we have no serial ports.

I called Microport: We can't help you, because you don't have
a service contract! This is fucking bullshit!!!!!

Well, John Plocher, do you want to stick the system up your ass?
-- 
Will Nelson		uucp: {decvax!decwrl}!pyramid!oliveb!cygnet!will
Cygnet Systems, Inc.
601 West California Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA  94086-4831	(408) 773-0770